Distractions	11
referred to in Chapter i, that different readers passively
register the same experience of a poem. Worst of all, it
may induce the belief that there are external rules to
^hich works of art must conform, and by which they may
be judged.
The common-sense notion, subtilized and refined, has
always had its philosophic supporters. Eminent among
these is Dr G. E. Moore, who advanced an objective
theory—in a form, certainly, which avoids many of its
harmfuHendencies, including the fallacy of external rules
—in his Prindpia Ethica (1903). I propose to refer to his
argument, and to more recent arguments of Mr Sturge
Moore, in Chapter v. The question is, of course, meta-
physical : but, in a preface to poetics, it is necessary some-
times to reconnoitre the borderland of metaphysics.
Finally, if we take the third view, we may be induced to
look for the source of poetic values, not so much in
experience, as m the active and healthy functioning of our
own part of the physical world, the body and the nervous
system. If we do so, we may as well say good-bye to
poetics as a distinct study, for it becomes merely a branch
of physiology.
For myself, I find it more repugnant to reason to
conceive of value as existing in the perfect adjustment of
the organism (apart from experience), than to conceive
of value as existing in the form of a picture or poem (apart
from experience). A study of nervous impulses, as
affected by poetry, is not a study of poetic experience.
According to Dr Richards, the unconscious impulses are
supreme: the quality of experience—the conscious delight
in poetry—is not to be trusted. "There are plenty of